Introduction

Moisture is the amount of water present in food. It is directly

proportional to the water activity of food. It is analyzed for labeling and
economic reasons and to have knowledge about the microbial stability or
how prone the food substance to sustain microorganisms is. A higher water
content means that it can support the needs of microorganisms to multiply
and could cause faster spoilage and danger to consumers. This is why
moisture is analyzed. Moisture is also determined so that consumes can be
informed about the product that they will buy. Many methods of moisture
determination are acknowledged by AOAC. These methods are classified as
physical, chemical, distillation and evaporation method. Evaporation method
mainly uses ovens to raise the temperature or pressure or expose the
substance to radiation to measure the moisture content of the sample. Under
the evaporation method is the infrared oven which is known to have the
shortest time in determining moisture at 5 seconds. It is effective because
the experiment will not cost much and is easy to perform. Ovens can also
analyze multiple samples at once because of its large space to contain
samples. However, it uses heat and is thus not applicable for heat labile
substances. It can also destroy some food components because of the raise
in temperature. Distillation method is also cheap but requires the substance
to boil and evaporate, consuming time. Chemical method, although suitable
for substances that are susceptible to evaporate or decompose in high
temperatures, results in an incomplete moisture analysis. This experiment
focuses on the analysis of moisture of flour using evaporation method.